Ghosts
by Kate Swynford
Summary: It's actually kind of rush. They say you get visions that your life flashes before your eyes. That all your dreams come true.


Sometimes, after everything is over, Lara asks him what it was like, being halo'd. He can't give her an answer she would be able to understand. So he tells her he doesn't really remember, and she pretends to believe him. The truth is that although his memory isn't too clear, there are some things he would rather forget.

From the moment Knott placed the halo on his head to the moment he woke up to hear Lara saying his name over and over again, a whole eternity had passed. The last conscious thought he remembered was his astonishment as he was being charged with Witwer's murder, but even that barely had time to register before everything went black.

Gideon had told him that the prisoners saw all their dreams come true, but if it was so, Anderton doesn't remember it. He supposes it was easier for the living to believe it. The only dream that gave him comfort was the one he is trying to push out of his mind now. It bore a frightening resemblance to his present: Lara pregnant, Lara looking at him, radiant with love, Lara watching the rain as he held her. He welcomes their occasional fights because they bind him to reality. He has trouble sleeping because he is afraid of waking up and finding out that it was all a dream. Even then, in his suspended state, he knew it wasn't real and it tore at him.

But mostly he was hovering in some kind of limbo. When he looks back on it, he imagines himself floating in some white milkiness that enveloped and soothed him. He thinks the precogs must have felt like that. Gideon had also told him that being halo'd gave people visions. Anderton is willing to believe that. His nightmares were full of strange images and familiar people. They were much weirder than anything he saw when he was high on neuroin. His memories of those visions are blurred and he has no desire to change it.

Sometimes he dreamed of being in Pre-Crime headquarters, sorting through the images of an approaching disaster. He was always too late to stop it. Sometimes he was driving along the maglev, but something went wrong and all the cars tumbled down from the vertical road. It was an eerie sensation, falling. Sometimes he dreamed of changing his eyes again, but this time Eddie Solomon wanted payback. They all did. In one of his more persistent nightmares he found himself in the containment section, but this time he was in the very center of it. All the other containers surrounded him and the halo'd were staring at him, their eyes bright like the fluorescent lights of the room. It was unbearable. He dreamed of everyone staring accusingly at him, from the advertisements in the malls that were calling his name, to the subway passengers, looking up from their newspapers. He didn't understand what his crime was, and he could never make out what breaking news was flashing through the headlines. He tried to hide from them, but the spyders always found him, no matter what crack he managed to slip through.

Occasionally, he got visits from people. At first it surprised him; he had never heard that the halo'd were allowed visitors. But then he realized they were not real either. Lamar came often, Lara never showed up. Dr Hineman received him in her botanical panopticum. She poured him some of her disgusting tea and morphed into Miss Van Eyck. His parents, despite being gone for nearly fifteen years, also came. They were clearly disappointed in him, and for the first time in his life he didn't care. Wally came, with Agatha slung across his shoulder. "Like a mermaid", Anderton thought for some reason. She was listless and didn't say a word.

Sean came to see him once. Only once. John never tells Lara about it, but he never looks for him again either. He supposes it's some sort of closure, but it does nothing to alleviate the pain. The moment he set his (in his dreams they are his, not Mr. Yakimoto's) eyes on his boy, he caught his breath. Sean looked six years older, as he should, and Anderton was desperately trying to take it all in, the smallest details of his appearance, the most insignificant changes. Sean looked at him sadly and said: "You gotta have faith, Dad". Anderton started to laugh, but what came out was a choked sob. "It's a little late for that", he said.

"You wanna hear something funny?" Sean offered. Anderton stared at him in dismay. "I lived for a year with a man who was pretending to be my father. He took me all over the world." He shrugged.

Anderton finally gathered the courage to ask the most important question: "Are you alive?"

"No. He got tired of pretending." Anderton closed his eyes. "Forgive me," he thought.

"I know you would have done anything to find me. I know you would have died for me," Sean was looking at him earnestly.

"I wanted to."

"Goodbye, Dad"

Anderton tried to stop him, but it was useless. Sometimes he thinks that maybe he should tell Lara. He used to think that not knowing was the worst thing, but now he is not so sure. Perhaps he'll tell her one day. But not now.

His next visitor was a surprise. John had never expected to see Danny Witwer. It wasn't really fair: he had done nothing to the guy, so why was he haunting him? Danny looked practically the same; only some dangerous gleam was gone from his eyes. Anderton suddenly remembered the last time he had seen Witwer: angry, bruised, staring at him through the car factory window. And their encounter in the elevator - Danny's triumphant smirk freezing at the sound of the alarm.

"I didn't kill you," Anderton said with some shame, because he had certainly been tempted to. He probably wouldn't have killed Witwer, but he hated the guy.

Witwer smirked, "Like I didn't know."

"Then what are you doing here?" Danny's grin faded. "Who killed you?"

"What do you think?"

"You found out about her." Somehow it wasn't that surprising. "You figured it out."

"Not all of it," Witwer's tone was bitter. "So stupid. I should have known."

Anderton didn't really know what to say to that, so he settled for some non-committal grunt.

"You should do something about it," Witwer said. "You can't just let him get away with it."

"What do you expect me to do? In case you haven't noticed, I'm halo'd, or we wouldn't be talking right now!"

"And you were so sure that the system was perfect."

"We all make mistakes, don't we?" That was a low blow, and Anderton regretted it immediately.

"I wanted your job. I would have been good at it. Could have made Chief of Pre-Crime at twenty-six," Witwer was talking in a small strange voice.

"Yeah." Anderton knew all about it. For the past six years his life had been made of "what ifs".

Time passed. He was never sure how many days he had spent there, but Lamar never came to see him again after Danny Witwer. John couldn't say he regretted it.

He dreamed of Agatha again. This time she was without Wally.

"Ditched your boyfriend?" the joke was lame, and he knew it.

"Poor John," she touched the top of his head, and for the first time he realized that his hair had been shaved off.

"Are you back in the Temple?" he asked. It was one of the things he was most ashamed of.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to stay there forever."

"Good for you," he said without much conviction.

"I saw your future," she said. John knew he didn't have one, but it was a dream and he didn't want to interrupt it. However, Agatha didn't say anything more. Instead she grabbed his shoulder and started shaking him.

Anderton likes to think that this is the moment Lara rescued him. He hopes that this is what Agatha meant, that Lara is his future. He wants it to be so, but he cannot be sure. He didn't have a chance to ask Agatha, and he knows that she wouldn't have told him anyway. But that's OK. He has seen too much of the future already and he has lived too long in the past. This is now.

. 


End file.
